The Encyclopedia Of American Religions

This encyclopedia, revised and expanded, contains over 2600 descriptive entries on the religious and spiritual groups of the United States and Canada.

Covers the significant religious denominations and movements that have originated or flourished in North America, from the beginning of European settlement to the present day.

A fundamental and well-illustrated reference collection for anyone interested in the role of women in North American religious life.

Based on more than 250 occurrences and extraordinary experiences that have served to lift believers out of the mundane world and place them in contact with a transcendental reality, The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena explores unusual and unexplained physical events, apparitions, and other phenomena rooted in religious beliefs. Well-known religion expert, J. Gordon Melton takes readers on a tour amongst angels, Marian apparitions, and religious figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, and Tao Tzu. Melton reports on dreams and near-death experiences; feng shui and labyrinths; statues that bleed, drink milk, weep, and move; snake handling, speaking in tongues, and stigmata; relics, including the spear of Longinus and the Shroud of Turin; and sacred locales such as Easter Island, the Glastonbury Tor, the Great Pyramid, Mecca, and Sedona. Each entry includes a description of the particular phenomenon and the religious claims being made for it as well as a discussion of what a scientist might have to say about it. Transcending the mundane, the entries take no sides and make no arguments: the journey is the experience and the experience is the journey.

This encyclopedia provides an overview of the main religions of Latin America and the Caribbean, both its centralized transnational expressions and its local variants and schisms. These main religions include (but are not limited to) the major expressions of Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Mormonism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses), indigenous religions (Native American, Maya religion), syncretic Christianity (including Afro-Brazilian religions like Umbanda and Candomblé and Afro-Caribbean religions like Vodun and Santería), other world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam), transnational New Religious Movements (Scientology, Unification Church, Hare Krishna, New Age, etc.), and new local religions (Brazil’s Igreja Universal, La Luz del Mundo from Mexico, etc.).